Nvidia showcases an AI-rendered, interactive virtual world

Think of it as an AI-rendered game demo

PC gaming hardware has always been a priority for Nvidia, but the company has begun to dedicate more and more of its resources towards the artificial intelligence industry over the past couple of years.

Whether the company is developing and selling GPUs intended for machine learning tasks or coming up with its own AI technology (such as DLSS), it's clear that Nvidia is taking a serious interest in the future of AI.

However, as separate as Nvidia's two focuses may seem at first -- gaming and AI -- the company has set out to prove that the two can intersect in new ways. The company today published a video showcasing a completely AI-rendered, interactive virtual world - in short, they developed an AI-powered game demo.

Using real-world video footage, Nvidia managed to train an AI model to create what appears to be a living, breathing city (or a part of a city), with remarkably realistic graphics.

As you can imagine, if this technology was brought to the game industry, the results could be revolutionary. Not only could it significantly cut costs for development studios due to automation, but it could also speed up the game development process as a whole.

The trouble is, the demo's performance is far from ideal. According to The Verge, Nvidia's demo only runs at around 25 FPS, and it could be "decades" before the tech can reach consumer-grade performance levels.

Regardless of how far off it is, though, it's clear that AI-generated graphics have potential - with a little luck, we may see further examples of that from Nvidia in the future.